1. Field of Invention
This application relates generally to a device for healthy management of plants potted in hanging containers and more specifically to controlling water and light relationships critical to maintaining plant health.
2. Prior Art
After the long months of winter, nature begins to bloom in the spring of each year. Consumers are eager to return to their retail garden center to buy plants and ornamentally decorate the interiors and primarily the exteriors of their homes, lawns and patios.
Retail garden centers have found it to be more and more popular to offer plants for sale in hanging baskets. Consumers are immediately gratified to have a mature plant, already in flowering bloom, to purchase and take home as an ornament for their place of residence. Typically consumers install hanging brackets, eye bolts from the eve of their house, poles in their yard and other hardware to hang the plant in a prominent attractive location.
After a few days the newly hung plants require watering and repositioning to maintain their health. As much as plants are loved there are also many obstacles to the plants health. Such as, much of the population work day jobs and are not available during the day to tend to the plant. Also, many elderly persons have physical infirmities which diminish their capacity to take care of a plant on a consistently regular schedule. Often times, many persons of all ages are just not fully aware of the subtle changes that take place with the plant relative to the plant's need for water and light.
The majority of persons do not water their plants on a consistently timed basis or in accord with changing weather cycles. The majority of persons water their plants by using a drench and drain method, when they are available to do the watering. They may feel secure they are meeting the plants watering needs. Also, rarely does the consumer unhook their plant and reposition the plant basket in the sun. This repositioning usually, for one reason or another, is far too difficult to do. As a result the plant begins to grow in a lopsided fashion and soil shrinks back from the inside of the container, due to the inconsistent watering, thus stressing the plant further.
It is a far too common scenario for a homeowner to leave the house in the morning believing their hanging plants to be healthy and fully watered. Then, returning home, at night, to find their plants wilted or at worst dead beyond recovery and their residence looking unsightly. Often times the consumer will return to the garden center in the belief there was something wrong with the plant they purchased. This is not a pleasant situation for the garden center employee to explain, to the consumer, how the consumer has unknowingly stressed the plant.
Attempts have been made to invent watering indicators. Many drench and drain advocates recommend the use of cheap soil moisture meters. It is highly debatable whether they are any better than poking your finger into the soil. Many times the construction is flimsy and highly susceptible to damage. Meters available for consumers are not professional instruments. Perhaps more important is the fact that they do not really measure moisture. They measure ionic reaction of the salts in the water. These meters will also give a false reading when the soil is very dry and has a high salt content. The meter can inaccurately read this as moist soil. Mechanical meter attempts, as well, have not been successful in resolving the issues that retailers and consumers have, today, with their hanging plants. Previously invented indicators are large, bulky and of no practical use. They are not visually pleasing to the eye and detract from the beauty of the plant. They are unscientific in their approach to measurement and do not work with the standardized hanging baskets produced by manufacturers today and sold in garden centers. If they are used at all, the plant basket hangs at such a low level the effect is not aesthetically pleasing. Often times this creates an unsafe condition where homeowners hit their head on the low hanging plant basket. As well, most do not effectively warn the consumer to water the plant. The reason being, warning indicators often contained inside of an apparatus are hard to view and often times get covered by dirt splashed back from watering a hanging plant. Watering indicators do not address the light needs of a plant in a hanging basket.
From the above, it can be seen what is needed is a device that is small and compact, easy-to-use, economical to produce, efficient to use, having a scientific measurement system, easy for the user to read and addresses the light needs of a plant in a hanging container.